help guide him, and he'll set money aside from his first day of work to his last, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. >>> welcome back. 18 minutes past the hour. by all accounts the dinner date went well and hopefully they'll see each other again soon. president obama taking a group of republican senators out for dinner last night. that was in the nation's capital, bipartisan cooperation was on the menu. has he began laying the ground work for a deficit-cutting deal. dan lothian is following the developments in washington. this morning, i called it a lovefest. berman says it a likefest only. shed some light for us. >> reporter: you know, it's amazing that we're talking so much about just this one dinner but it's unusual because the president doesn't usually sit down and meet with gop senators in this kind of setting. the white house saying that the president thought it was a very good dinner, that there was a good exchange of ideas and the senators telling us they talked about everything from budgets to entitlement reform to tax reform. one telling us that